A growing number of local food and beverage operators are planning to list on the local bourse to raise capital for building brand awareness and accelerate their pace of expansion.
The four-day Taipei International Chain and Franchise Exhibition closed yesterday at the Taipei World Trade Center, with various exhibitors showing interest in launching initial public offerings (IPO) in Taiwan in the near future.
La Kaffa International Co Ltd (六角國際事業), which operates bubble tea chain Chatime (日出茶太) in Taiwan, China, Southeast Asia, Australia and the US, expects to list on Taiwan’s GRETAI Securities Market in the second half of this year.
La Kaffa, which runs about 800 tea houses globally, debuted on the Emerging Stock Market (興櫃市場) in December at NT$168 per share. The company’s shares closed at NT$176 on Wednesday, stock exchange data showed.
Meanwhile, the company aims to accelerate its expansion in the US and Japan this year by cooperating with strong strategic partners.
“We hope to build up principles for franchising through our experience in the US,” La Kaffa president Eddie Chang (張國強) told the Taipei Times on Thursday.
The experience may further help the company create a set of standard operating procedures (SOP) to deal with its franchising business elsewhere in the world, Chang added.
La Kaffa has been authorizing a sole agent in the US, expecting the partner to help the company accelerate its expansion there over the next five years.
The company aims to raise its number of tea houses in the US to 300 in the next five years, from its current nine stores.
The company also has established a joint venture in Japan with a Japanese company, with La Kaffa holding a 70 percent stake. It expects to launch 50 tea houses in the new market in the next five years.
OCOCO International Co Ltd (億可國際飲食), which operates about 1,200 Coco Fresh Tea & Juice (都可茶飲) outlets worldwide, is also looking to accelerate its expansion in the US and Europe this year.
The bubble tea chain said it would this year start offering overseas franchise opportunities for interested individuals to extend its coverage, hoping to increase its stores to more than 1,500 by the end of this year.
OCOCO president Jonathan Lin (林家振) said he expects the company to list on a global major securities market next year, with the Taiwan Stock Exchange remaining one of his favorites.
“We hope that listing on a global major bourse could raise the company to the next level, making more outstanding overseas partners interested in cooperating with us,” Lin said.
Apart from the two bubble tea chains, Super-Mill Enterprises Co Ltd (超秦企業) — which operates more than 1,000 breakfast outlets under the brand My Warm Day (麥味登) — also plans to list on Taiwan’s GRETAI Securities Market in 2015.
Super-Mill vice president Allen Chou (卓靖倫) said the company is looking to expand My Warm Day to an all-day-restaurant brand in the next two years, while upgrading about 100 of its direct-selling stores.
The company has also encouraged its franchise stores to extend their operating hours to at least noon, to help carry out My Warm Day’s brand concept, Chou added.
Super-Mill, which also provides meat products to wholesalers, saw its revenue reach NT$2.6 billion (US$86.88 million) last year, showing growth for the 10th consecutive year, company statements showed. It expects sales to grow 8 percent this year to NT$2.8 billion.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS